Prejudice and Discrimination

Why do people discriminate in favour of members of their own social group (in-group members) and against members of social groups to which they do not belong (out-group members)?

Dr Mark Rubin

Position: Senior Lecturer
Email: Mark.Rubin@newcastle.edu.au
Staff website

Dr Rubin is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the School of Psychology. He is particularly interested in the social psychological processes that contribute to prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping. His recent research investigates a new explanation of bias against migrants (Rubin, Paolini, & Crisp, 2010), and when and why we tend to perceive people in other social groups as being relatively similar to one another (the out-group homogeneity effect; Voci, Hewstone, Crisp, & Rubin, 2008; Rubin & Badea, 2007).

Dr Stefania Paolini

Position: Lecturer
Email: Stefania.Paolini@newcastle.edu.au
Staff website

Dr Paolini is a lecturer in social psychology/statistics and an ARC-funded research fellow in the School of Psychology. Her interests are in the psychology of intergroup relations and include stereotyping, prejudice, affect, and meta-cognition. Her recent publications include empirical research on the affective and cognitive bases of cross-group friendship effects (Paolini, Hewstone, & Cairns, 2007), the effects of meta-cognitions on social inductive reasoning (Paolini, Crisp, & McIntyre, 2009), and a review of research on intergroup contact and intergroup anxiety (Paolini, Hewstone, Voci, Harwood, & Cairns, 2006).

Nicholas Harris

Position: PhD in Social and Learning Psychology
Email: Nicholas.C.Harris@uon.edu.au

Nicholas Harris has just commended his PhD in social and learning psychology under the supervision of Dr Stefania Paolini and Dr Andrea Griffin. His research focuses on interethnic anxiety, the anxiety people experience when in contact with individuals of a different ethnicity. This is quite fitting, as the research team comprises of a Cypriot, an Italian, and a Swiss, a bit like the United Nations! Nicholas' project uses a learning paradigm to compare the acquisition of anxiety experienced first-hand with that experienced vicariously through observation of others. The aim is to discover how we develop interethnic anxiety, and how we can reduce it to improve intergroup relationships in society (thus having the potential to save the universe!)

Cathy Arman

Position: PhD in Clinical Psychology
Email: Cathy.Arman@uon.edu.au

Cathy Arman has transferred from a Professional Doctorate in Clinical Psychology to a PhD in Clinical Psychology under the supervision of Dr Stefania Paolini and co-supervision of Prof Mike Startup. Cathy works as a psychologist in Mental Health and has experience in both acute and non acute services. Her PhD research is on the social psychological predictors, mediators, and consequences of stigma disclosure from the perspective of a non-acute mental health population. Her work adopts an intergroup perspective to this phenomenon and draws from recent functional analyses of stigma disclosures.

Ben Crebert

Position: Professional Doctorate in Clinical Psychology
Email: Benjamin.Crebert@uon.edu.au

Ben Crebert is conducting a Professional Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, under the supervision of Dr Stefania Paolini. His research examines links between interpersonal attachment style and social identity complexity, defined as the subjective representation of multiple ingroup identities. Ben's work ultimately aims to establish whether there is a relationship between social identity complexity and individuals' outcomes in terms of health and wellbeing.